Researchers at the University of California, San Diego report a breakthrough in technology that could pave the way for digital systems to record, store, edit and replay information in a dimension that goes beyond what we can see or hear: touch.

“Touch was largely bypassed by the digital revolution, except for touch-screen displays, because it seemed too difficult to replicate what analog haptic devices – or human touch – can produce,” said Deli Wang, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering. “But think about it: being able to reproduce the sense of touch in connection with audio and visual information could create a new communications revolution.”

In addition to uses in health and medicine, the communication of touch signals could have far-reaching implications for education, social networking, e-commerce, robotics, gaming, and military applications, among others. The sensors and sensor arrays reported in the paper are also fully transparent (see optical image of transparent ZnO TFT sensor array at right), which makes it particularly interesting for touch-screen applications in mobile devices.

Wang is the senior author on a paper appearing in Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports, published online Aug. 28. Co-authors include 11 researchers at UC San Diego, including fellow ECE professor Truong Nguyen, and UCLA professor Qibing Pei, whose team contributed to the sections on using polymer actuators for analog reproduction of recorded touch.